S4 E76 | eXpert Tease: Pipeline Automation with Adam Gordon

Welcome to the CXR channel, our premier podcast for talent acquisition and talent management. Listen in as the CXR community discusses a wide range of topics focused on attracting, engaging and retaining the best talent. We’re glad you’re here.

Chris Hoyt 0:16
I am Chris Hoyt president of CareerXroads, you have joined us for our first eXpert Tease of 2021. So this is our weekly quick hit conversation with industry leaders and practitioners who are sharing a life or career lesson, sort of a hands on how to, if you will, with us in just about 10 to 15 minutes, these are pretty fast. So the topics that we’re actually decided on advanced by hundreds of ta leaders from around the world, cover a range of subjects such as diversity, equity, and inclusion, leadership, employee wellness, and just about anything else you can imagine that our people in the industry are dealing with or working on. Now, as you may already know, we have a new survey open to anybody where we’re asking what’s on your mind for 2021, you can find that that survey titled 2021 priorities in the Research and Reports section of www dot CXR.works. Now, if you’re here live, which is also open to anyone, you can participate via the live chat on the screen. So feel free to ask a question or two. And if we’ve got time, we’ll try to get them answered here in the broadcast. If we run out of time, we’ll address them online and our free and open exchange at CXR.works/talent talks. Today, I am joined by Adam Gordon, he is the CEO of an innovative little company, you’ve probably heard of Candidate ID, where they’re really focused on pipeline automation and lead generation. Adam, welcome.

Adam Gordon, CandidateID 1:39
Thank you very much. I’m really privileged to be here. And nice to see so many faces turning up to talk about talent, pipeline automation and in demand talent.

Chris Hoyt 1:51
Yeah. So now you know, I’ve been a fan of your work, and what Candidate ID is doing for years, and I think you’ll have to correct me. I think we first met in Amsterdam, you were in front of 1000s competing amongst some other impressive vendors on stage. Yes. Did I get it right? Oh, you’re muted. I thought I got it wrong.

Adam Gordon, CandidateID 2:17
So here’s what happens when you when you when you mute yourself to cough? You can’t unmute yourself. So everybody, you know. Yeah, that’s right. We did we met in Amsterdam at on Unleash, I think you were a I think you might have been a you are you were a judge in the I think it was the startup competition or something like that. And we were participating in that.

Chris Hoyt 2:40
That’s right. That was a lot of fun. Yeah, it was, there was a big, well, we won’t waste the 10 minutes we’ve got on that. But it was really fun to see you go from like the smaller rooms all the way to the big main stage, it was a lot of fun. So as we all know that hiring top talent in demand top talent is important. And some would probably swear that as recruiters that’s that’s likely all we do. So in your experience, given the clients that you work with and your time in the space, what’s one thing you’d like people to know or consider about hiring in demand talent? What would you share with anybody listening that they could or should consider around that topic?

Adam Gordon, CandidateID 3:19
Well, the first thing is, so you asked me, What have I learned in the last year from like running the business that we’re in the last year has been a crazy, crazy year, of course, one that none of us will have ever experienced anything like in our careers, and the the organizations that kept working with us. And that came to work with us in the last year, given were in the area of talent, pipelining and talent, pipeline automation, they were all in. And it was only in December, that we realized that they were all in an area that I described as in demand talent. So a lot of them were in technology, in engineering, in healthcare, and for those that are in things like retail, and hospitality and areas like that. They were working with us for their tech teams in demand talent. And it became very, very clear that so many organizations are treating the hiring of indemand talent in the same way that they’re treating the hiring of everybody else. They’ve got a way that they go about recruiting and they are not really varying the tactics according to the market dynamics. So in demand talent to me that means that there’s a supply and demand imbalance. There are more there is more demand than there is available supply and suffer. This is for most stem type jobs like engineers, software developers, nurses and physicians. But it extends into other kind of right brain type of activities, like enterprise sales, for example. So if there are more people trying to hire those individuals than there are people available and with those skills, then you’ve got an in demand talent scenario, and you need to take different tactics. So

Chris Hoyt 5:21
So what you say it’s, I just want to make sure on the same page, so what you’re saying is, if my organization of recruiters is God forbid, is a post and pray type of recruiting process. And suddenly, we’ve got a brand new level of tech that we’ve got to hire the company is expanding on, my recruiters are going to do the same thing they’re doing for all the other jobs, if that’s what you’re seeing that they’ll recruit very much the same, if not super close to the where they’re doing everything else for those?

Adam Gordon, CandidateID 5:49
I mean, if you don’t believe people are doing that, go on to Indeed and take a look at the amount of adverts for data scientists that are out there. These people are not on indeed, they’re not even on LinkedIn. They’re certainly not, you know, pandemic or No, they’re not walking around London and New York and San Francisco wearing a sandwich board saying I’m available, come and hire me I really desperate for a job. You know, they don’t care. They don’t care about your job descriptions. They don’t care about your employer branding. They don’t care about your organization, probably. So what have we got to do to get their attention? This is where we start thinking about inbound marketing. And we start thinking about thought leadership and we start thinking about nurturing people, what is it they actually care about, because it’s not your company or your jobs that you’re hiring for yet, yet! We’ve got to think about generating their attention in different ways. And this is when we need to start thinking about what are those different ways that we can capture their attention. And I can tell you what they are, because I’ve got data that shows it, it’s helping them with their career, helping them with skills they need to develop, helping them with insights that will help them do their jobs better. It’s about subliminally, doing employer putting employer branding into this, but not by talking about your MVP, by putting your hiring managers into the middle of all this useful and relevant program of content that is going to generate goodwill from that audience. So it’s about taking the hiring manager, when you’re taking the job brief and saying, I’m also going to ask you three questions that have nothing to do with this job, or about about you and working in your team and about what it’s like to work here. Those questions are, how did you succeed in your career to become a manager in this organization? What are the skills people need to progress their careers as a business analyst, and one of the mistakes you’ve made along the way, which you know, you want people to learn from, that doesn’t take long to get somebody on zoom? and ask them those questions. And then that’s real content that people are going to find valuable, useful, relevant, the employer brand is so subliminal, separate it from the job description, and all that kind of thing. But make use of that it’s quite easy to create this kind of content, but we’re not thinking like this, that we work them where

Chris Hoyt 8:13
I love that. But then where does it go out? And we’re like, we’ve done a zoom video with the manager over the department. She’s got a wonderful success story of overcoming adversity to get into this leadership role. Where do we put that?

Adam Gordon, CandidateID 8:28
Well, lots of places we put it. But this depends on your organization’s maturity when it comes to the concept of talent pipelines, talent, communities, nurture, marketing, all that kind of thing. So you’ve really got to think about who’s cold, warm and hire ready. Almost none of these in demand talent, or what we call hire ready, they’re not ready to come in, you know, have an interview for a job, they might be warm, which is they’re starting to become interested in your employer brand, but most of them are cold. They don’t care about any of that just now. So how do we how do we get to them? How do we get to them is by running a program, a nurture program, through email, possibly by text message, possibly by social media, emails, the number one driver of engagement. But social media and text message can also work for getting communications out to these people, to nurture them to turn their heads, and to get them clicking on to your content. Now, it’s not just about that kind of outbound sort of stuff, let’s share with them the video. It’s also about community. So when we think about talent communities, a lot of the time I’m hearing the term talent community being used to describe an email list, or just a list. That’s not a talent community. A talent community exists, when you can talk to each other when generalists can all talk to each other. But all you’re really doing is hosting your hosting, you might be giving useful, you know, communication which is leading with value, but you’re not selling anything, you’re just providing the platform in the way that we are here. And this. So this kind of thing could be a very, very useful type of channel for generating goodwill from those people, you get them on zoom, you get them on zoom with the hiring manager, or if you’re in a bank, you get them on teams or something else. And you just get them in a round table, half a dozen people, let’s talk about the latest trends in this profession, or this industry, or this type of skill. And let’s not sell anything, let’s just generate some relationships and generate goodwill. That’s a talent community. So the community aspect of it’s really important.

Chris Hoyt 10:40
Yeah, I think a lot, you know, a lot of us, yourself included, have been saying that a distribution list, a mailing list, or job alerts, list is not a talent community. So who, in your opinion, Adam is doing this? Well, like who’s holding like these Professor hours with a hiring manager, right, you can just drop in and sort of get to know the company or some aspect of that.

Adam Gordon, CandidateID 11:04
I can give a couple of quite good examples. And then I’m going to give one that’s just that knocked knocked out of the park example. So Lockheed Martin have done a lot of talent, nurture, and they’ve done it really well. And their talent. Nurture is not about like, here’s a job, here’s a job. Here’s a job. It’s about, let’s bring people together and talk about elements of engineering and technology in the kind of defense world, which we need to know more about and the security world. So they’ve done it really well. Another one that’s done it really well is Intel, and Intel have done. They’ve got networks for people with specific and proper networks, not an email, less list, and actual network where they bring people together for events offline and offline. For people with specific skill sets. SAP have done a wonderful job of this as well. And they’ve got a real red carpet program for diversity. So you know, if they need more females in a particular country, or they need more people of a particular different mix of ethnicities or that sort of thing, then they do they do like Cirque du Soleil events. So they do sports events, and they bring people together for like, really magical experiences, and that’s brilliant. But the best example, is from a company that’s not in the USA, but they’re in a lot of other countries in the world called Specsavers. And Specsavers is Europe’s number one employer of optometrists. And that’s absolute in demand talent. According to indeed, optometry is the hardest to hire skill set in the UK. And it’s top three in every other country in Western Europe. So they’re also in Australia and New Zealand, but they’ve got a talent community called Spectrum. Spectrum is an online website with events, which you can you can connect to, and they’re on zoom and they’re on Facebook Live and things like that. You can connect to them through the website. It’s got learning and development area where you can go in and find content which is relevant to your perfect, you know, your profession as an optometrist. There’s lots of continuous professional development. And then there is news news about what’s going on in optometry. It’s a login site. It doesn’t mention Specsavers anywhere. There’s an offline like roadshow when you can go and travel and meet people and be in events and things like that, which attracts about two 300 people in the different locations. Specsavers are nowhere to be seen. It’s run by their talent team is learning and development at the front recruiters. They’re all in the back but the recruiters are pulling the strings on all of it.

Chris Hoyt 13:45
I love it. I love it. I knew about Specsavers. I have not heard of Spectrum I’ve not heard of the community they built so I’m anxious to check that out. So Adam, what is what’s one thing you’d leave us one parting words of infinite wisdom on hiring the in demand talent like like really nurturing that pipeline? What would you tell everybody?

Adam Gordon, CandidateID 14:04
I think I think it’s really important to consider just consider this term, which is leading with value, being useful and relevant. Don’t not asking for things, not asking them to fill in a form in order to access something. Giving them things that you can get your company’s teeming with useful, relevant things that the people the in demand talent you want to hire are going to find use are going to find, you know, compelling, or they’re going to want to click on that. You want them clicking on that in advance of getting to your job descriptions and like the call to action being come and work for us. Because if they’re not clicking on that, then you’re starting the relationship from absolutely cold at the point that they do get to that, that point where they’re ready for a job so you’ve got to nurture them way before they’re ready. They’re ready for a job move because they may never be ready for a job move. So you got to turn their heads in it way,

Chris Hoyt 15:00
I love it. I am gonna steal the phrase leading with value shamelessly probably for the next month. I think I can get some miles out of that out of as always love catching up with you really appreciate you giving listeners and viewers your time today. Thanks.

Adam Gordon, CandidateID 15:14
It’s a real privilege. Thanks so much for having me.

Chris Hoyt 15:16
You bet to those that are still on the line. Thanks for hanging with us for this episode. Be sure to join us next week we’re gonna have Jim D’Amico, who is the global talent leader at Celanese, fantastic guy. He’s also the board president of ATAP that’s the Association for talent acquisition professional professionals, where he’s going to share why and how we should be celebrating how we all just fell into talent acquisition, which is probably surprisingly true for all of us. It should be a fun one. So if you haven’t already, be sure you subscribe to the show just about anywhere you listen to your own podcast and until then, we’ll see everybody online@cx.org slash talent talks.

Announcer 15:50
Thanks for listening to the CXR channel please subscribe to see CXR on your favorite podcast resource and leave us a review while you’re at it. Learn more about CXR at our website CXR.works facebook.com and twitter.com /CareerXroads and on Instagram @CareerXroads. We’ll catch you next time

Tagged as: eXpert Tease.